EU set to kill street photography

The “Freedom of Panorama” is the right to take pictures in public spaces, even if you incidentally capture copyrighted works, from building facades to public sculptures to images on t-shirts and ads — and on July 9, the EU will vote whether to abolish it.

Freedom of Panorama is one of the key recommendations of German Pirate MEP Julia Reda’s copyright report, recommending that member-states be required to enshrine this freedom in their national laws. The Legal Affairs committee is prepared to get rid of this, thanks to an amendment proposed by French MEP Jean-Marie Cavada, who wants people taking commercial photos to get prior permission from copyright creators for any incidental copyrighted works captured in their images.

UK residents can contact their MEPs through WriteToThem, where you just have to enter your postcode to get a list of them. Other countries’ residents will have to go through the European Parliament’s site, but there are email addresses on the Parliament’s MEP search engine, which allows you to narrow things down by parliamentary constituency; and Wikipedia has a page listing MEPs by country, translated into some of the other EU languages if you hit the links along the left-hand side.